Challenge

WWT called upon our trusted partner, NetApp, after we were approached by one of the nation’s leading packaged food manufacturers to refresh and restructure the IT infrastructure in their plants and remote offices. The manufacturer’s aged IT equipment was built on disparate compute, storage and network components, which forced them to manage daily IT operations with remote employees and disparate processes. Troubleshooting outages was slow to respond, time-consuming and costly. In addition, the company did not have a standardized way to backup data or replicate for business continuity, which was recognized as a business risk. The current state infrastructure was limiting the manufacturer’s plant overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and needed to be addressed.

Solution

WWT turned to NetApp to quickly devise a plan for building a converged infrastructure that centralized back up data and storage management tasks. Remote manufacturing facilities were refreshed with FlexPod minis, comprised of a NetApp 2552, UCS mini servers, and Nexus switches. The solution was sized, packaged and bundled to specifically meet the needs of remote offices and provided corporate IT with a consistent, supportable infrastructure across their entire business. This allowed more plants to be supported while utilizing fewer resources.

Conclusion

NetApp and Cisco worked closely with WWT during the solution development, implementation and training phases to help bridge gaps between traditional outdated IT methodologies and the new optimized operational model. To help train the manufacturer’s IT team and plant workers, we set up a field proof of concept, and hosted a three day training session to break down the cultural divide between corporate and remote employees. The session helped familiarize them with the new technology and built a foundation for more collaboration between centralized and remote employees going forward. The new cooperation will facilitate a roll-out of converged NetApp infrastructure across all of their 140+ remote offices.